Announcing the 2019 North American Forest & Climate Movement Convergence!

Submitted to EF! Journal

Carbondale, IL—The Indigenous Environmental Network, Global Justice Ecology Project and Shawnee Forest Defense! today announced The Resurgence: 2019 North American Forest & Climate Movement Convergence, to bring together activists, groups, Indigenous peoples, communities and others to create strategies to address the climate and biodiversity crisis. It will be held in the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois from October 11 through October 14 – culminating on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

The Convergence Coordinating Committee Call to Action stated:

We will bring together our diverse experiences and backgrounds to build a radical movement that unifies efforts to protect forests and land with those dedicated to social, environmental and climate justice to create a resurgence powerful enough to achieve the systemic change we need to survive.

Forests, communities and the Earth are under attack. Governments, corporations and elites in North America are collaborating with others to consolidate power, profit and control on a global scale. Their actions are driving climate change and destruction of forests, causing mass-extinction of species, devastating communities, and threatening whole peoples and the entire biosphere.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently stated that life on Earth is in extreme danger if we do not achieve rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society by 2030. To avoid the worst impacts from climate change, we must immediately cease burning fossil fuels and drastically reduce over-consumption. We must protect and restore the Earth’s forest ecosystems, and defend territorial rights of Indigenous and forest dependent communities whose lands most of the world’s remaining intact forests are found.

Forests are intricately intertwined webs of life. The more intact and diverse forests are, the better they can withstand stresses like climate change. Forests will be the model for our organizing. The more diverse our movements, the more interconnected, and the more focused on the roots, the stronger and more resilient we will be to withstand the stresses of the massive effort we undertake.

The Resurgence: 2019 North American Forest & Climate Movement Convergence will take place just above the convergence of the great Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, in the forested Shawnee Hills, next to the steep topography of the Illinois Ozarks and the southern swamps of the Coastal Plain. It is the traditional lands of the Indigenous Shawnee, Kaskaskia and Chickasaw Peoples. We remember all who lost their lives during the Trail of Tears and are buried in and around the region.

It has never been more critical to build a broad, united movement that can resist the wholesale war against the Earth.

For more information, including registration and Strategic Action Sessions please see: forestclimateconvergence.org

Editor’s Note: A call-out for the convergence as well as a short history of previous Shawnee forest defense can be found in the Eostar/Spring 2019 issue of the Journal.

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